Elon Musk has regained his spot as richest person in the world, with his net worth reaching an estimated $187.1bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Last year, the Tesla co-founder briefly lost the top rank to Bernard Arnault of luxury congolmerate LVMH, as shares in the automaker declined last winter.
But since 6 January this year, Tesla stock is up 100 per cent, driven by increased investor demand, customer interest in recently discounted Tesla models, and a better economic forecast, according to Bloomberg.
As recently as December, things looked very different for Mr Musk.
Between November 2021 and December 2022, the Twitter owner’s net worth fell by over $200bn, one of the largest losses of wealth in recent history.
That sum is equivalent to the GDP of Greece, and was greater than the entire net worth of the world’s next-richest man at the time, Mr Arnault.
The sudden collapse was driven by the rapid decline in the value of Tesla stock at that time.
Last year marked the company’s worst year ever on Wall Street, losing $700bn amid investor fears about the impact of Covid in China and Mr Musk’s controversial takeover of Twitter.
Mr Musk himself has made light of his at times chaotic finances.
Last week, he joked that after his contentious takeover of Twitter in 2022, he had spent $44bn to acquire “the world’s largest non-profit.”
In November, Mr Musk said Twitter was losing $4m a day.
The billionaire has also presided over deep layoffs at the social company, which has slashed its workforce nearly 75 per cent, from 7,500 employees down to about 2,000 in recent months.
That hasn’t stopped Mr Musk from appearing to mock his own recently fired colleagues.
On Sunday, he appeard to make a joke about another 200 employees who were reportedly let go.
“Hope you have a good Sunday. First day of the rest of your life,” he wrote on Twitter.
